James Forsyth reviews the week in politics Alistair Darling will stand at the Dispatch box on Wednesday and say that there is a plan to halve the Budget deficit in the next four years. His quiet delivery and demeanour of an Edinburgh lawyer will make this sound like a reassuring return to fiscal sanity. It
Reading the Observer on Sunday (don’t judge me, it’s my job) I came across the story of a Special Branch policeman called Officer A, who lived undercover with extremist left-wing groups for years in the mid-1990s. As a member of the Special Demonstration Squad, and distant from his wife and child, he grew a ponytail,
M. ‘I’ve spotted him!’ Me. ‘Where?’ M. ‘Down there. Having a coffee. On his own.’ Me. ‘Hey. Do you think he’d like it if we joined him?’ M. ‘I doubt it. He’s reading a book.’ D. ‘God, is he reading his own book? Unbelievable. He’s reading Yellow Dog.’ M. ‘No it’s not. I think it’s
Much was made, in advance, of the fact that Samantha Cameron was at last speaking in public. She did it on Sunday night, interviewed by Trevor Mcdonald — very well, and in a surprisingly old-fashioned way. She looked lovely when she said that she was proud of her husband and that it would be ‘an honour’
Martin Vander Weyer’s Any Other Business No sooner do I confess (6 March) to having dabbled in the dark art of off-balance-sheet finance, than along comes an official report into the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street firm led by the monstrous Dick Fuld, that reveals the mother of all financial disappearing tricks.
